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Uchee Pines SDA Church

Michael Hargreaves

The Coming Sunday Law

Heavenly Father we thank you that Sabbath is soon to be upon us and that we can lay aside all the cares of this week and rest in your presence.

Bless us this evening, Friday evening we pray in Jesus name, amen.

I've had a number of people ask about could it be that with the Pope's visit this month that we may see the Sunday Law.

The Sunday Law actually started in America back in the 1600s, 1700s, the Sunday Blue Laws.

And the term Blue Law actually was a derogatory term.

Blue was referring to people that had a very strict moral code and they called them blue noses.

And so that's where the term, the blue law came from.

And the first Sunday blue law was in Virginia all the way back in 1617 and that law it required church attendance and authorized the militia to force colonists to attend church services.

This is right here in America, back in the 1600s.

Other early blue laws prohibited work, travel, recreation, and activities such as cooking, shaving, cutting hair, wearing either lace or precious metal, so you couldn't wear your fancy clothes on Sunday, you couldn't wear jewelry on Sunday, sweeping, not allowed, making beds, kissing, and engaging in sexual intercourse.

You see, the Puritans believed that the baby would be born on the same day it was conceived.

So when a baby was born on Sunday, it meant that the parents 9 months earlier had violated the Sunday Blue Law.

Back in 1891, Alice Earle wrote a book entitled The Sabbath in Puritan New England.

Now, you understand that the Sabbath, most Christians are thinking of Sunday.

So she's referring to Sunday here in her book, The Sabbath in Puritan, New England.

And in the book, 1 place she describes Captain Kimball of Boston was in 1656 set for 2 hours in the public stocks for his lewd and unseemly behavior.

Now when you were put in the public socks, that was very embarrassing, and not just embarrassing.

When they had you either with your feet or your head in your hands, locked in the stocks, people could come along and throw dirt on you, throw rocks at you, poke at you with sticks, whip you with switches, spit on you, and do all manner of derogatory things to you or a public spectacle.

Well what was his lewd and unseemly behavior?

Captain Kimball, which consisted in his kissing his wife publicly on the Sabbath day, Sunday, Upon the doorstep of his house, see this was out in the open, when he had just returned from a voyage in absence of 3 years.

He'd been gone 3 years and unfortunately when he got home it was Sunday and he forgot the law, kissed his wife in public.

So for 2 hours they put him in the socks.

In her book, The Sabbath in Puritan New England, Alice says the Vermont Blue Book contained equally sharp Sunday laws.

Whoever was guilty of any rude, profane, or unlawful conduct on the Lord's Day, Sunday as they saw it, in words or actions by clamorous discourses, shouting, hollowing, screaming, running, riding, dancing, jumping, was to be fined 40 shillings and whipped upon the naked back not to exceed 10 stripes.

The New Haven Code of Laws, New Haven, that's Connecticut, I've been there.

The New Haven Code of Laws, worse, more severe still, ordered that profanation of the Lord's Day, Sunday, shall be punished by fine imprisonment or corporal punishment, like a whipping, and if proudly and with a high hand against the authority of God, with death.

That was here in America in the 16 and 1700s.

Now let's fast forward to 2009 CBS News, a history of Sunday.

And in this article on Sunday, CBS was talking about this lady who wrote a book, writer Judith Shulevitz.

In a world of 24-7 commerce, she's pushing for a return to laws.

This is what CBS News said back February 1, 2009.

Writer Judith Shulevitz, in a world of 24-7 commerce, she's pushing for a return to laws that would shut down businesses 1 day a week.

Which brings us back to the Puritans of the 1630s, which I've just described to you tonight.

In some places, Sunday observance was required on pain of death.

But, what if they were actually on to something?

Back in early colonial America, if you did not observe Sunday right, you were faced with fines, imprisonment, whippings, torture we might say, and even death.

And in 2009, CBS News said, well, maybe that's not a bad idea.

Well for my study of prophecy, I believe the answer is yes.

If you were raised as a Seventh-day Adventist, Then you have heard for a long time about a future Sunday Law, sort of like the great final landmark indicating that we have now come to end time.

Testimonies Volume 7 says, 141, the substitution of the laws of men for the law of God, the exaltation by merely human authority of Sunday in place of the Bible Sabbath is what?

When this substitution becomes universal, God will reveal himself.

So this is sort of like the final landmark, Sunday Law, when it's passed.

There are actually 23 stages of the final crisis, final events.

And we're not going to go into all the details.

This is actually part of a long series that I've done on the chronology of the coming crisis.

We could spend a whole evening talking about that.

But I'd like to read with you tonight from the Booker A Controversy, page 589 and 90, if you're taking notes.

It says, in accidents and calamities by sea and by land, in great conflagrations, that's fires, are we seeing that on the west coast?

In fierce tornadoes, terrific and terrific hail storms, in tempests, floods, cyclones, tidal waves, and earthquakes in every place and in a thousand forms, Satan is exercising his power.

He sweeps away the ripening harvest and famine and distress follow.

He imparts to the air a deadly taint, and thousands perish by the pestilence.

Now we would assume that's referring to people, but you may have heard earlier this year, over in Kazakhstan I believe it was over a hundred thousand antelope dropped dead they're trying to figure out what happened continuing it says these visitations are to become more and more frequent and disastrous.

This is current events, written way back in the book Great Controversy.

And, and then, after all these natural disasters, and then, and then the great deceiver will persuade men that those who serve God are causing these evils, that's you and me.

It will be declared that men are offending God by the violation of the Sunday Sabbath.

And there are already some preachers are already saying this.

That this sin, breaking Sunday, has brought calamities which will not cease, will not stop, until Sunday observance shall be strictly enforced.

So the natural disasters will bring about the Sunday law.

Are we seeing the natural disasters taking place?

And that's what's gonna bring on the Sunday Law.

So, number 3, stage number 3, Sunday Law Agitated.

I know some of you are thinking now, Pastor, you went from stage 1 to stage 3, what happened?

Well, if you're taking notes, stage 2, as I understand it from studying prophecy, is ecumenism, threefold union.

And you're looking at a very amazing photograph there.

That is a picture which was taken back in June of last year, 2014.

You recognize the man in white in the middle, but who are all those around him in black suits, dresses?

Can anybody tell me who the man to the direct left of Pope Francis is?

That's Kenneth Copeland, 1 of the most well-known, famous, Pentecostal, charismatic preachers in America.

And there he is standing side by side with the Pope.

Which brings me to the statement from Great Controversy 588.

This is 1 page earlier from the statement we just read, 589, about the natural disasters which will bring about the Sunday Law.

The page before that says the Protestants, the who?

Those are all Protestants from the United States, except for the man in white in the middle, the Pope.

The Protestants of the United States will be foremost in stretching their hands across the Gulf to grasp the hand of spiritualism.

That's already happening with the contemplative prayer movement of the movements, tongue speaking.

Most of these commandment breaking churches today are working miracles, speaking in tongues, casting out devils.

They will reach over the abyss to clasp hands with the Roman power.

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The Coming Sunday Law

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